I was quite interested in the .pdf of her response to this site. I have some thoughts.
First, I found it bizarre that the statement is written about her in the third person, and then signed off BY her. It makes the text sound like a testimonial from someone who knows and is vouching for her, until you find out at the end that she wrote it all about herself, kind of like when self-published authors go write their own book reviews on Amazon.
One thing I need to say that should be a fundamental understanding, is that NO elder or holy person carries any authority that isn't vested in them by their community. In other words, no elder/holy person functions in seclusion, unknown to his/her tribal people, or in secret. In authentic Native traditions, you can ask anyone in the community, "Is so-and-so a medicine man/healer/holy person?" and pretty much anyone will know. These folks aren't a covert priesthood, working in the underground. Tribes know full-well who their own cultural leaders are. I would never claim to be a ceremonial authority, leader, or elder because frankly I know I don't have that sanction by my community. I accept that, and am happy to be a "common man" without having to puff up as some mystical prophet and stuff.
Having said that, I feel very uncomfortable with Kiesha's attempt to settle her bona fides. Her bio is chock full of the opposite of what I've described: secret alliances made with incognito shamans who work secretly, unverifiably, and who are even unknown to their own people. That is antithetical to ANY Native people, although it's effective at impressing the "secret knowledge-craving" new-agers. The whole "secret discipleship" trope sells like hotcakes to new-agers.
For example, she claims to have been ordained by shamans such as "Falling Feather," a name that no traditional Sioux friends of mine have EVER heard (and I have many, all the way up through the current traditional chief families. I asked them). The only "Falling Feather" that Google knows is a dog breeding farm, which I doubt is the place where Kiesha received her special knowledge, but I'm not going to speculate further. There was, at one time, a "Falling Feather Creations" shaman website, but it was just a shop that sold trinkets and terrible drums and chicken feather smudge fans and stuff, and now they're gone.
She writes a section to address, "Is Kiesha really Native?" and then carefully avoids answering that question. The closest she comes is, "My family still lives on a reservation, but I won't tell you who they are." Really? Because on a lot of reservations, white people outnumber Indians! "Living on a reservation" is absolutely not a meaningful suggestion of Indianness. Furthermore, no person who "grew up away from the tribe" would ever be made a shaman. Holy leadership instruction is lifelong and sanctioned by the community. It's not a secret rite of passage comprised of mystical tutelage the way white people fantasize, like when Bruce Wayne went to Tibet to learn from the League of Shadows before becoming Batman. Which is pretty freaking sweet if you're a ninja-trained superhero, but not so much if you want to claim prophetic shamanic authority derived from a living people whose traditions you've simply bullshitted.
No real Indian I've ever met buys into that "tribe of many colors" thing. So when Kiesha answers the "Are you really Native?" question with "I'm a member of the tribe of many colors," that's just a fancier way to say "Nope!" Which reminds me: my goal in the next year or two is to write the WORST new-age "Native shaman" book I possibly can, peddle it for a year to the Sedona/Kiesha types, and then come out as a happy fraud and donate all the money to NARF. I'll be sure to use the term "tribe of many colors," because that's just too comically cheesy to pass up.
I suppose it might impress white people to say that she went through the inipi ceremony. But that's not an initiation into ANYTHING. White people by the thousands are invited into the sweatlodge all the time, and fortunately most simply feel appreciative, and don't go home afterward feeling authorized to proclaim themselves the new uber-shaman of the tribe! Heck, I went to church with a Methodist once, but I'm not going to go around making up stupid stuff and claiming it's "Methodist traditions that I was taught in their ceremony." Or was it Lutheran? Oh, what the hell; if Flatheads can sell inipis, Methodists and Lutherans are interchangeable too.
And by the way, why DOES every wannabe latch on to Sioux words for everything? Is she Flathead or Sioux? Or do newagers think EVERY tribe calls their sweatlodge an "inipi" and say "Mitakuye Oyasin" after any utterance?
The elder who shamanized her is named Brave Heart? REALLY??
The entire sentence "She was initiated into shamanism in the Native American tradition..." is just so self-destroyingly faulty it's laughable, as Shamanism is NOT a "Native American tradition." It's Siberian. I was initiated into Scientology in the Southern Baptist tradition. See? It's as dumb as saying that going to a rap concert where there are black people means you've been initiated into African folk ceremonies. It's not just racist, it's so racist it freaking HURTS.
I give her credit for clarifying that she does not represent any tribe in what she does. But she has to realize that she gives off exactly that appearance when she constantly grabs Sioux words and cites Sioux elders (mythical though they may be) to conduct her Sioux ceremonies. But on the other hand, which is it? Have these Sioux elders initiated her according to tradition in their Native shamanic ways, or is she not their designated acolyte as she works so hard to imply?
It's easy to answer the question, "Who recognizes her as a Shaman?" when you can just cite made-up names of made-up people as her vouchsafes.
Incidentally, you know who recognizes ME as the smartest, most talented, sexiest man alive? Well, there's this one girl, Shawna Little Feather, and um, Starfox Cinnamon Medicine, and Persephone Eagle Thong...but they're all secret people and you can't meet them or look them up or find anyone else who knows them.
It's like the old "I do TOO have a girlfriend! but she lives in...um, Canada!" routine. So Kiesha is vouching for herself by referencing the names of people who vouch for her, even though these are names of people nobody else knows. It's very bizarre to prop up your credibility by invoking references that are so fictionalized, they actually reinforce the doubts you're trying to refute in the first place.
I enjoyed her rambling list of neo-Native sects who accept her. "Three Bears, Sister Wolf, the Cherokee, and Cheyenne individuals, (not the entire Nation of specific tribes, as well as Grandfather Kimmey of the Hopi, the Sami grandmother, the Aboriginal people, the Waitaha, the Maori, the Maya, the Zulu, and including the lamas of Nepal and Tibet..."
I think she forgot "Grandmother Willow" and "The Na'vi of Pandora" and "the Ewoks" and "The lightbearers of Melchizedek's order of Metatron" and whatnot.
When you have to pleadingly reassure people that your council of elders really, honestly, cross my heart, "does exist," you've already strayed from anything remotely familiar to Native traditions. Not even a trail of confetti from a shredded Brooke Medicine Eagle book can lead you back. Furthermore, no true "shaman" would regard any person as a "lower quality of being" for any reason, let alone because they have disputed your claims. How can you tell if someone is thoroughly contrary to any Native religious tradition? For starters, they rank life into a hierarchy of the approval-worthy versus "low quality group of beings." Only colonizers do that.
Also, Adam Yellowbird is a Sedona nuager. Citing him as a reference for your authenticity is like Sarah Palin citing praise by Michele Bachman to prove someone else thinks she's smart. Citing Adam Yellow Bird for credibility is like bragging that your mom won mercury thermometer-eating contests when she was pregnant with you. Citing Adam Yellow Bird for credibility is like getting a Kardashian to vouch that you're down-to-earth. It's like getting Vanilla Ice to assure people you have real street cred. It's like getting Johnny Depp to authenticate how Comanche you are.
Last but not least, any epistle that ends with the term "love vibration" is either a stale new-age cliche-riddled bit of claptrap, or a new Kei$ha song.
Aho! I have spoken, and mitakuye oyasin, and whatnot...
